Colorful graphics and images that stand out make a website more user-friendly for several reasons. It provides the user with an idea of the page’s content at a single glance and allows their eyes to rest from the boring blocks of texts that often make them lose interest in the information they are after.

While this may sound too simple for the complicated world of SEO, these reasons actually make more users explore the website and revisit it in the future. However, these aren’t the only benefits you can get from adding images to your page.

According to experts, it is imperative that you maximize the pictures you add on your website through SEO. Here are some ways on how you can make the images on your page SEO-friendly.

Don’t Use Too Much Stock Photos

Although they are taken by professionals, stock photos tend to be generic. On top of that, they also appear in a dozen other websites, which means it won’t help your page stand out from the sea of sites on the worldwide web.

Go for Original and High-Quality Images

Originality is the key to standing out from the crowd. However, you should still take quality into consideration. With those factors in play, your images will surely help your page become more SEO-friendly. The key is to have someone generate unique graphics or take high-quality photos of your actual company to make potential customers see what your firm has to offer.

Make Images an Integral Part of Your Web Content

Randomly chosen images won’t work. Make sure to choose pictures that are related to the content of a page to help users experience a more effective emotional impact. This is also a great way to gain more following and add value to your web content.

Be Careful Not to Incur Copyright Infringement

Some images are subjected to copyright laws. This means you should be careful not to use ones from Getty, DepositFiles, Shutterstock, and other stock photo providers if you don’t have any license to use them to avoid costly lawsuits. Aside from money, doing so might even cost you your SERP rank.

Use Tools to Improve Pictures

Pictures have different impacts, depending on how they are presented. There are lots of tools available at no extra cost that you can use to enhance them, including Pixlr photo editor and Canva. This way, you can add better visuals and stand out from the crowd the even if you’re using stock images.

Choose the Right Image Format

Choosing the right image file format makes a heap of difference when you want to include photos for SEO purposes. Large graphics should be saved as PNG instead of JPEG to highlight the crisp lines. This is best used for company logos that have transparent backgrounds.

However, you should opt for JPEG for other images incorporated into the content of your website to lessen the load time as it has an efficient size, with just the right sharpness to showcase the photo at its best.

Resize Images for Both Appearance and Speed

Resizing images is another great way to optimize them, but make sure that you retain the quality for aesthetic purposes. To achieve this, it is imperative that you set an optimal file size and dimension for your photos. Ideally, the size should be not more than the width of the website or blog.

Pen Descriptive Captions

Captions are a critical part of the storytelling capacity of images. This means you should write descriptive captions that will both help readers understand the images and connect it to the page’s content.

Make SEO-Friendly Name and Alt Texts for SEO

Image names and alt text help web crawlers find your page. This means you should not only describe what is in the pictures but also include your page’s targeted keywords.